I just looked and it was $170 witht the same basic fee as a reular spot ($100 per year). You get 5 mesages free or you can buy bundles of messages $30 for 100 msg or $50 for 500 msgs. I emailed spot a bit ago to see what phones might work with it. It mentions androids but I have an iphone. The concern I thought of is that a phone bettery isn't going to last that terribly long even if you enter fulloy charged and shut it off when you're not sending a message. I think you'll use too much battery turning the phone on and off all the time. I suppose you would need to start carrying some sort of charger for your phone either solar or something that would let you charge a phone battery from some other sort of battery. I think it's almost starting to get too complicated for a long trip. They also make sell a GPS unit that you can use with the spot connect instead of using your phone. Gets very expensive though, $550 plus the same service fees.